A blog for The Urutsk Cycle and Related Subjects,
including the URUTSK: World of Mystery RPG.
Shipwrecked survivors of a galaxy-spanning empire (ruined when the core exploded) settle upon a wetlands world occupied by humans and other species. They then poke through ruins of their Ancient ancestors as they strive to regain space and then, starflight.

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Sunday, September 26, 2010

There was no Mutants of Marnharnna game this Friday, as two players were unavailable.

However, C., my girlfriend, and I played a bit both Friday and Saturday in her Baroness Averdyn solo-game.--(The pace of the assembly, fitting the refinements in alongside complete revision, clarification, and organic development of the character's background, baseline attitudes, ambitions, etc. -- It is so conducive to a nice dynamic interplay between Top-down and Bottom-up building on a neighbourhood/borough-level.)

We've sorted out that she was not raised at the Park Estate in the centre of Old Yovend (not to be confused with the Yoven Garrison in OLD Yovend), rather, she was raised on the North Coast of Byrtheq. Her upbringing in her youth was pastoral in her wanderings, and the crash of the waves on the 'Bloody Coast' upon the sheer cliffs that overlooked the quarantined isles of the Savage Folk. They are forest dwellers who never succumbed to the Continental Empire, nor the soft words of their Isle brethren in joining them in the Bronze, and Vurenym-Alloy Ages.--It was in this instalment that she learnt that her character, the Baroness Vanya Averdyn, is derived from this stock admixed with diluted Aelbaan blood.

Her time spent at the inherited Winter Home was yearly in her youth, and occasional when she moved to Yovend to attend Academy, where she studied the Essentials, and favoured Art Theory, and Art History. She had two friends, both male, throughout school. One, a Law Student from modest means, the other a minor noble from Lhoma. It is from her Lhoman friend that she mastered fencing methods unorthodox to the West, such as parrying and disarming with the held scabbard.--At academy, and later throughout life, Vanya was challenged by 'The Duchess' (later reduced to the non-aristocratic honour of Baronetess [Btss.] after her husband, a Duke, was stripped of his Admiralty and executed as a traitor for conspiring with Humanoids) Byniir Aeryx, a (perhaps) full-Aelbaan woman at least 20 if not 50 years Vanya's senior, although she appear younger than the Baroness.

The gristly murder of a young woman upon the Estate was the first mystery, but in the course of play, others have surfaced at nearly every turn:

* The Estate was built as an internal and external façade which covers an ancient fort, possibly of Latter Qhattanian provenance, explaining the odd layout of the Estate and her childhood memories of secret hiding places she couldn't later find in the floorplans.

* Silt-aligned Humanoid creatures with a mane of writhing earthworms have been at run within the 'false walls' of the Estate for an unknown period of time. They are able to dissolve into Silt, and even this stuff then steams and sparks away into nothing.

* The current ground and street level of Yovend is at least 30' higher than the foundation of the fort, and the hills in the landscaping may all be barrow mounds (Isles of the Dead, when the floods came)

* What's more is that Vanya just discovered that at least one of the sites is Qobryn, and that a teleportation framework was in place throughout linked locations she has no geographic marker for, although she is aware of facing in different directions when she stepped into a new location's chamber. One was active, with cooking fires in a cave formation, another was a grotto with light shining up through crystal clear water, upon which a dinghy is moored, while the third location was a king's throne/burial room, but the skeletal figure is pierced by what appears his own broadsword.

* A malfunction in the T-Frame kept her pattern in the buffer for 10 months before reconstituting her. She found her way back to the chamber panelled in the Qobryn yellow-orange alloy they were/are renowned for, and accidentally activated some sort of energy column that burnt a hole through the ship timbers that had been used to seal up the site from whence she had disappeared after descending by line into the underground chamber.

* In the intervening ten months time, her rival, the 'Duchess' Aeryx had approached Vanya's lawyer friend about running the charity and sweets shoppes in the Baroness' absence. All of the money could be accounted for, and an increase in profit was seen for the four+ months the business had been back in operation.

* Wireless Telegraphony in the Estate has increased with Karl's (the ghillie) anxious search for sign or word of his Lady, and his having scoured his stable of Sig-friends from around the globe via telegraphonic rumour and library sites. More vacuum-tube aethertronic technology has been invested from the weathered man's income, and a harmonic attack by him seemed to 'muck-out' the Silt humanoids as their resonance frequencies became disrupted.

* The young lad (likely the son of the murdered woman) had been remanded into the State's custody, although as soon as Vanya heard this, she moved to foster him. Her lawyer friend found this an easy task to accomplish.

* Hints of conspiracy with the Constabulary now lead Vanya to a meeting with the Department Head of the Omniprecinctual Yovend Metropolitan Constabulary, who claims to have been good friends with her uncle (and fellow Astronomer's Lodge member).